


How to Get Your Friend to Stop Dating that Jerk (with Pictures)

by dragonesdepapel



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Getting Together, Glimmer's bf is a jerk and Catra is tired of his shit, Idiots in Love, Swearing, they are in their twenties here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24635689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonesdepapel/pseuds/dragonesdepapel
Summary: Catra is totally ok with just being friends with Glimmer, ok? She really is. What she's not ok with is having to watch the girl she's in love with get her heart broken over and over again by her good-for-nothing boyfriend.
Relationships: Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 132





	How to Get Your Friend to Stop Dating that Jerk (with Pictures)

**Author's Note:**

> You ever had your brain be so against letting you do your homework that it unearthed a concept for a fic that had completely vanished from your memory? I had even started writting for this! It was on my notes app! How did I forget about it???

She opens the door and she only gets a quick glance at a crying Glimmer before she’s shoved out of the way. Catra would be worried, she really would be, if she didn’t know exactly what this was about. 

“What did that jerk do this time?” 

Glimmer has already made herself at home in Catra’s couch. She’s hugging a pillow that’s usually in Catra’s bedroom, and Catra has no idea how she managed to get it without her noticing, but Glimmer is surprisingly fast for someone her height. Like, scarily fast. Sometimes Catra swears there’s no way Glimmer can appear places the way she does. 

“He broke up with me!” Glimmer wails, hiding her face on the pillow. 

Catra can’t help the sigh that escapes her. Glimmer’s sobs are probably too loud for her to hear it anyway. Catra goes to the kitchen, relieved that she had gone grocery shopping earlier in the day. This was going to be painful enough with the help of junk food, she doesn’t want to think about facing it barehanded. She takes two glasses, a bottle, and an assortment of bags and makes it back to the living room. 

Glimmer raises her head when she hears her come in. “No ice cream?” 

“Are you kidding me, Sparkles?” 

“Sorry!” Glimmer says, looking not sorry at all. 

She leans forward to grab a chocolate bar, which Catra only got because she knows it’s her favorite. She didn’t think it’d come in handy so soon though. 

“So,” Glimmer starts, eyes tearing up again, “we were going out today, right?” 

Catra does her best to look attentive. She knows she’s not the best at faking facial expressions though, and she kinda wishes she hadn’t turned down Adora’s multiple invitations to her improv group when she had gone through that weird theater phase. 

“Yes, because it’s your anniversary.” 

Glimmer nods so hard that the glass she picked up slosh a little to the side. “Exactly! Our anniversary!” 

Speaking of Adora, where is she? By some cruel, cruel joke, she’s never home whenever Glimmer drops by because she’s had a fight with her boyfriend. A thing that happens a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Adora would be better suited to handle this. Or Bow. Why didn’t Glimmer go to Bow? Why couldn’t she go to anyone or anywhere else besides Catra? The universe sucks and Catra is gonna fight it. 

“And he was the one who suggested going out tonight, and I thought ‘wow! He wants to plan our anniversary dinner for once?’ and I was so happy, right? Because we had been having those issues, remember, and I had talked to him about how I needed him to be more present, and I thought ‘he’s really taking it seriously!’” 

Catra nods while opening a second bag of potato chips. 

“So I spend hours getting dressed up, because it’s our six-year anniversary, and I thought it was a big deal, right?” Glimmer barks a hollow laugh, and Catra uses it as an excuse to ogle her more openly. Of course she had noticed that Glimmer is looking amazing. Glimmer always does, but tonight she’s especially stunning. She’s wearing a long strapless purple dress that let Catra catch a glimpse of Glimmer’s winged tattoos when she had walked in. Her hair's styled in a different way than it usually is, but that still suits her perfectly. Even her makeup was refusing to give up on her despite all the crying. Her mascara had run a little under her eyes, but everything else stayed in place. Only her high heels had been already disposed of and were now lying next to the couch. How anyone could have looked at Glimmer tonight and decided to break up with her was beyond Catra. How anyone at all could look at Glimmer and decide to break with her was beyond Catra. “But of course,” Glimmer continues, “of course it was too good to be true.” 

Another fit of sobs takes over her, and Catra leans forward to give her hand a light squeeze. Glimmer recovers quickly, and lets go of her hand. Catra tries really hard not to hold it against her. 

“So we get out of the car – and we didn’t even drive that far from his place, so I was a bit confused – but then we get out of the car, and you know where he took me?” 

“Where?” 

“A Taco Bell!” she moans, covering her face with her hand. 

For a second Catra is too stunned to react. Sure, Crowbar is an idiot and a piece of shit, but that was low, even for him. 

“But I think ‘ok, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt! It's the first time he’s planned something big, so maybe he was just a bit lost on what to do!’” 

Catra busies herself with her glass so she doesn’t tell Glimmer exactly what she thinks, which is that a 24-year-old who has been in a committed relationship for six years should at least know how to book a reservation at a nice restaurant for their anniversary, and that, if it’s the first time in six freaking years that he has actually tried doing something nice for his girlfriend maybe it meant he’s actually a pretty shitty boyfriend. She also thinks that he sucks, and that he’s the worst, and that sometimes she finds herself wondering if she would actually murder him if she could get away with it. She thinks the answer is yes. She thinks Adora would help her hide the body, and that she probably has a seventy-step plan ready to go and is only waiting for Catra to ask her about it. She thinks maybe she’ll ask her about it soon. 

“We go in, we get our food, we sit down. And all that time I’m waiting– I don’t even know what I was waiting for.He just started talking about that stupid band of his, and he kept going on and on and then he finished his food and he got up to leave? He didn’t even give me an opening to give him his gift. And – keep in mind I was very upset at this point – so I asked ‘is that it?’ and you know what he said? He said ‘what?’ HE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT WAS OUR ANNYVERSARY” Glimmer yells.

Catra winces, and leans forward to refill Glimmer’s glass. It’s just soda, but Glimmer gulps it down like a shot of vodka. This is probably the first time Glimmer’s tendency to dramatics actually matches the one required by the situation. 

“And sure, maybe I lost it a little bit. Maybe I started shouting at him in the middle of a Taco Bell. Maybe I even made a little boy cry. But it was our anniversary! It is our anniversary,” she repeats, quieter this time. 

Glimmer stays silent after that, gaze lost. Catra truly hates to see her like this. Especially over a good for nothing like fucking Crowbar. 

“And then what happened?” she asks, hoping it will at least reignite Glimmer’s anger, making her forget about her sorrows for a little while. 

“He said I was being a bitch,” Catra clenches her fists so tight she can feel her nails sinking into her skin, “high-maintenance.” Glimmer waves her hand in the air, like that was a totally normal thing to be called by her boyfriend. “The usual.” 

Catra forces herself to open her hands before she hurts herself, Adora wouldn’t like that at all. She grasps the edge of her seat and imagines all of her violent energy flowing through her arm and to the floor. She takes a deep breath. Glimmer seems more centered now that she’s gotten the full tale out of her and is now morosely looking at a handful of m&m's she’s dumped on the table. She starts picking up the red ones and dropping them on her mouth one by one. 

“So what now?” 

She hates herself for asking. She really does. She hates herself for even hoping that the answer will be anything other than what it will be. Because the thing is, they’ve been through this. Glimmer, Catra, Crowbar, Adora, Bow, all of them. She’s pretty sure even Sea Hawk has had at least one encounter with a recently-broken-up Glimmer. Sometimes she’s the one dumping Crowbar, sometimes she’s the one getting dumped. They always circle back to exactly the same place. It’s been like this since even before they started officially going out, exactly six years ago, when they were in their senior year of high school. Crowbar is an ass, and he makes Glimmer cry, and she lies in Catra and Adora’s couch, and they listen to her vent, and then she goes back to that asshole and they do the same dance all over again. 

And Catra knows. She knows this hurts Glimmer. She knows her tears are real, she knows she gets the worst part out of all of this. But it’s been getting harder and harder to be there for her when she won't even consider listening to them. They’ve told her time and time again that Crowbar isn’t worth it. That she needs to move on. But no matter what they say, no matter what that garbage of a human being does, at the end of the day Glimmer will go back to him. It’s agonizing to watch, and not only because Catra has been in love with Glimmer since she saw her shout at Coach Weaver the time she put so much pressure on Adora she almost got a panic attack in the middle of the court. But, you know, that doesn’t make it easier either. 

Glimmer blinks up at her, and Catra tightens her grip on the couch. 

“I don’t know, I’ll wait?” 

“For what?” 

“He’ll come crawling back eventually, he always does,” Glimmer throws herself back on the couch, exhausted just from picturing it, “and I will take him back like I always do, and–” 

“-why?” 

The words leave her mouth before she has had time to stop them. It’s pointless, she knows it is. Everyone has been trying for six years to make Glimmer come to her senses and no one has ever succeeded, why would tonight be different? Why would Catra make it different? 

“Why?” 

And yet... 

“Yes, why?” 

She wants to know. She needs to hear it. It’s Glimmer’s life and she can do whatever she wants with it, but if Catra is going to have to go through this, if she’s going to have to console the woman she loves over and over and over and over again because she keeps letting some asshole break her heart, the least she deserves is to know why. 

“Because I love him.” 

Catra snorts. It doesn’t even hurt. “Please.” 

“What?” asks Glimmer, sitting straight. “I do!” she throws her arms in the air, and Catra just stares her down. “We’ve been together six years.” 

“That doesn’t mean you love him. You do this all the time. You spend half your time around the human embodiment of garbage, and the other half complaining about him.” 

“Hey, he’s not–” 

“But he is, Glimmer!” Catra snaps. “He really fucking is! Look at you! Look at the state you are in! You don’t deserve this, and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve you.” 

“I know he can come off as a little selfish, but you don’t know him like I do. You guys have never given him a chance!” 

“That’s because he doesn’t deserve a chance. But you are wrong, we still gave him one. Actually, we gave them a fuckload of chances. He screwed up every. single. one.” 

Glimmer’s stance gets more and more tense as she goes on, but at this point Catra doesn’t care. She’s a grown girl, she should be able to handle the truth. 

“A little selfish?” Catra laughs. “You know what he is? An asshole. Your boyfriend is a fucking asshole. He knows exactly how to dance around the line of what is and isn’t acceptable and he uses it to his advantage all the time. He knows you are too good for him. He knows he has to be careful not to lose you. He’s a manipulative useless piece of shit.” 

A silence follows her tirade, but Catra isn’t satisfied with that. 

“Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m wrong,” she pushes. 

Glimmer holds her gaze for a few seconds, then averts her eyes. “I really wanted to believe this time things would be different.” Her voice wavers a bit, but she doesn’t start crying again. 

It’s as much of an admission as she’s ever going to get from her. And maybe Catra should leave it at that. Glimmer’s night has already been shitty enough. But this is the most progress she’s ever had in this topic, and at this point Catra needs this. She needs to know there’s a reason for one of the best people she knows to keep getting hurt like this. 

“What I can’t figure out is why you are still with him.” 

Glimmer sighs. “Please don’t make me say it.” 

“Say what?” 

Glimmer moves her hands in an exasperated gesture. “C’mon Catra, let’s face it, who else is going to want to be with me?” 

From all the things Catra was expecting to hear that’s- 

What? 

“What?” she says. She must have heard that wrong, right? 

Glimmer puffs. “You heard me! You know what I’m like! I’m bossy and impulsive and high-maintenance! Who else is going to put up with me? Excuse me,” her tone grows sarcastic, “from clinging to the only person who is willing to give me affection.” 

Is this the universe’s idea of a joke? Catra is going to fight it twice, and she’s going to win both times. 

“Sparkles, you really are an idiot, you know that right?” Catra says and she isn’t even sure of what her body is doing right now. Her heart is beating at full speed and she feels like she needs to pounce, to run, to jump. It’s not an uncommon sensation for her, and Adora likes to joke about her lacking enough enrichment. This time she knows exactly what is going on, and it's not about lacking enrichment, it’s about her mind being made up before she has even had time to process the consequences of what she’s going to do. 

Glimmer isn’t happy though. She gets up from the couch and stomps her feet, glaring at Catra. “Excuse me?” 

Catra gets up too. “You are amazing! You know this! You kick ass! You could have anyone you want!” 

“Well I don’t see anyone forming a line!” 

Change of plans, it’s Glimmer she’s going to murder. “Are you serious right now?!” 

“What? It’s true! I know you are my friend and you have to–” 

“Shut up!” Catra yells, her patience running out. Glimmer’s eyebrows jump to her hairline, but she does in fact shut up. “First,” she says because she knows Adora and Bow would never forgive her if she didn’t, “romantic love isn’t the only valid form of love you asshole! All your friends love you and love being around you and we are all really damn lucky to get to be in your life! So maybe reevaluate the way you see your relationships and your self-worth! And second,” she continued, not giving Glimmer a chance to interrupt her, “there is a line! It starts with me!” 

Catra has never seen Glimmer stay silent in astonishment this long before. Finally, she stammers out, “Catra-” 

“Now, listen,” Catra doesn’t lose her aplomb, “I’m perfectly happy being your friend, ok? I’ve been in love with you for a long time, I’ve made my peace with it, but I’m not just going to stand here and listen to you-” 

“No,” Glimmer interrupt hers. “I mean, Catra!” 

Glimmer takes a step forward, grabs Catra’s face with both hands, and kisses her. For a second Catra is the one who’s too stunned to do anything. She recovers quickly. Her hands land on Glimmer’s bare shoulders and make their way down to her hips. When they separate, she notices with pleasure that Glimmer’s magically perfect makeup isn’t looking so perfect anymore. The rest of her face is fine, but her lipstick is now smudged around her lips. Catra’s sure some of it must be on hers too. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Glimmer says, frantic, “I love you too, I’ve loved you since you tripped Octavia for making fun of Adora that day after class, and I’ve wasted so much time, and-” 

Catra kisses her cheek, just to see if Glimmer’s dark lipstick will transfer over to it. It does. 

“Sparkles,” she murmurs against her skin. 

Glimmer makes a questioning sound.

“Shut up and kiss me.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Me: We don't even have time to address Glimmer's insecurities and damaging concept of relationships in this fic, I can add a quick author's note  
> Me, two seconds later: actually it's gonna bug me if I don't  
> Like they ARE going to have to talk about it later, but for now they can make out on the couch until Adora gets home.  
> (She'll take one step in, see what's going on, turn on her heel and walk right out while she texts Bow to ask if she can stay over at his place that night.)


End file.
